05: Filter and Select

Overview

This tutorial covers two important {dplyr} functions: filter() and select(). Easy to confuse, filter() uses logical assertions to return a subset of rows (cases) in a dataset, while select() returns a subset of the columns (variables) in the dataset.

Tip

To remember which does which:

filter() works on rows, which starts with “r”, so it contains the letter “r”.
select() works on columns, which starts with “c”, so it contains the letter “c”.

Setup

Packages

We will be focusing on {dplyr} today, which contains both the filter() and select() functions. You can either load {dplyr} alone, or all of {tidyverse} - it won’t make a difference, but you only need one or the other.

We will also make use of the {GGally} package later on for some snazzy visualisations and {correlation} for…well, I’ll give you three guesses!

Exercise

Load the necessary packages.

Solution

library(dplyr)
## OR
library(tidyverse)

library(GGally)
library(correlation)

Data

Today we’re going to start working with a dataset that we’re going to get familiar with over the next few weeks. Courtesy of fantastic Sussex colleague Jenny Terry, this dataset contains real data about statistics and maths anxiety.

Exercise

Read in the dataset and save it in a new object, anx_data.

On the Cloud, you can read in this dataset from the data folder using here::here().

Elsewhere, you can download or read in the dataset from this URL:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drmankin/practicum/master/data/anx_data.csv

Solution

Read in from file:

anx_data <- readr::read_csv(here::here("data/anx_data.csv"))

Read in from URL:

anx_data <- readr::read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drmankin/practicum/master/data/anx_data.csv")

Codebook

There’s quite a bit in this dataset, so you will need to refer to the codebook below for a description of all the variables.

This study explored the difference between maths and statistics anxiety, widely assumed to be different constructs. Participants completed the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS) and Maths Anxiety Rating Scale - Revised (R-MARS), as well as modified versions, the STARS-M and R-MARS-S. In the modified versions of the scales, references to statistics and maths were swapped; for example, the STARS item “Studying for an examination in a statistics course” became the STARS-M item “Studying for an examination in a maths course”; and the R-MARS item “Walking into a maths class” because the R-MARS-S item “Walking into a statistics class”.

Participants also completed the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (STICSA). They completed the state anxiety items twice: once before, and once after, answering a set of five MCQ questions. These MCQ questions were either about maths, or about statistics; each participant only saw one of the two MCQ conditions.

Important

For learning purposes, I’ve randomly generated some additional variables to add to the dataset containing info on distribution channel, consent, gender, and age. Especially for the consent variable, don’t worry: all the participants in this dataset did consent to the original study. I’ve simulated and added this variable in later to practice removing participants.

Variable	Type	Description
id	Categorical	Unique ID code
distribution	Categorical	Channel through which the study was completed, either "preview" or "anonymous" (the latter representing "real" data). Note that this variable has been randomly generated and does NOT reflect genuine responses.
consent	Categorical	Whether the participant read and consented to participate ("Yes") or not ("No"). Note that this variable has been randomly generated and does NOT reflect genuine responses; all participants in this dataset did originally consent to participate.
gender	Categorical	Gender identity, one of "female", "male", "non-binary", or "other/pnts". "pnts" is an abbreviation for "Prefer not to say". Note that this variable has been randomly generated and does NOT reflect genuine responses.
age	Numeric	Age in years. Note that this variable has been randomly generated and does NOT reflect genuine responses.
mcq	Categorical	Independent variable for MCQ question condition, whether the participant saw MCQ questions about mathematics ("maths") or statistics ("stats").
stars_[sub][number]	Numeric	Item on the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale. There are three subscales, denoted with [sub] in the name:<br>- [test]: Test anxiety<br>- [help]: Asking for Help<br>- [int]: Interpretation Anxiety.<br>[num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (no anxiety) to 5 (a great deal of anxiety), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
stars_m_[sub][number]	Numeric	Item on the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale - Maths, a modified version of the STARS with all references to statistics replaced with maths. There are three subscales, denoted with [sub] in the name:<br>- [test]: Test anxiety<br>- [help]: Asking for Help<br>- [int]: Interpretation Anxiety.<br>[num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (no anxiety) to 5 (a great deal of anxiety), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
rmars_[sub][number]	Numeric	Item on the Revised Maths Anxiety Rating Scale. There are three subscales, denoted with [sub] in the name:<br>- [test]: Test anxiety<br>- [num]: Numerical Task Anxiety<br>- [course]: Course anxiety.<br>[num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
rmars_s_[sub][number]	Numeric	Item on the Revised Maths Anxiety Rating Scale - Statistics, a modified version of the MARS with all references to maths replaced with statistics. There are three subscales, denoted with [sub] in the name:<br>- [test]: Test anxiety<br>- [num]: Numerical Task Anxiety<br>- [course]: Course anxiety.<br>[num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
sticsa_trait_[number]	Numeric	Item on the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety, Trait subscale. [num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much so), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
sticsa_[time]_state_[number]	Numeric	Item on the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety, State subscale. [time] denotes one of two times of administration: before completing the MCQ task ("pre"), or after ("post"). [num] corresponds to the item number. Responses given on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much so), so higher scores reflect higher levels of anxiety.
mcq_stats_[num]	Categorical	Correct (1) or incorrect (0) response to MCQ questions about statistics, covering mean ([number] = 1), standard deviation (2), confidence intervals (3), beta coefficient (4), and standard error (5).
mcq_maths_[num]	Categorical	Correct (1) or incorrect (0) response to MCQ questions about maths, covering mean ([number] = 1), standard deviation (2), confidence intervals (3), beta coefficient (4), and standard error (5).

Filter

The filter() function’s primary job is to easily and transparently subset the rows within a dataset - in particular, a tibble. filter() takes one or more logical assertions and returns only the rows for which the assertion is TRUE. Columns are not affected by filter(), only rows.

General Format

1dataset_name |>
  dplyr::filter
3    logical_assertion
  )

1: Take the dataset dataset_name, and then
3: A logical assertion about the variable(s) in dataset_name that returns logical (TRUE or FALSE) values.

Filtering with Assertions

The logical_assertion in the general format above is just like the assertions we saw in the first tutorial. The rows where the assertion returns TRUE will be included in the output; those that return FALSE will not. Inside the filter() command, use the names of the variable in the piped-in dataset to create the logical assertions.

As a first example, let’s use some of our familiar operators from the first tutorial. To retain only people who completed the maths MCQs, we can run:

1anx_data |>
2  dplyr::filter(
3    mcq == "maths"
    )

1: Take the dataset anx_data, and then
2: Filter it keeping only the cases where the following assertion is true:
3: The value in the mcq variable is exactly and only equal to "maths".

So, the tibble we get as output contains cases that have the value "maths", and NOT "stats", nor any NAs (because NA does not equal "maths"!).

Error Watch: Detected a named input

Remember that for exact matches like this, we must use double-equals == and not single-equals =. If you use single equals, you’re not alone - this is such a common thing that the (incredibly friendly and helpful) error message tells you what to do to fix it!

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::filter(mcq = "maths")

Error in `dplyr::filter()`:
! We detected a named input.
ℹ This usually means that you've used `=` instead of `==`.
ℹ Did you mean `mcq == "maths"`?

Naturally, we can also filter on numeric values. If we wanted to keep only participants younger than 40 years old, we can filter as follows:

1anx_data |>
2  dplyr::filter(
3    age < 40
    )

1: Take the dataset anx_data, and then
2: Filter it keeping only the cases where the following assertion is true:
3: The value in the age variable is less than 40.

Exercise

Produce a subset of anx_data that doesn’t contain any male participants.

Solution

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::filter(
    gender != "male"
  )

Exercise

Produce a subset of anx_data that contains only participants as old as the median age, or younger.

Solution

Here we can take advantage of the fact that we can use variable names as objects inside {dplyr} functions like filter()¹. Then we write a logical assertion just like we have done in previous tutorials.

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::filter(
    age <= median(age, na.rm = TRUE)
  )

If you mysteriously got an empty tibble, you may have missed out the na.rm = TRUE argument to median().

As a final example, let’s consider a situation where we want to retain only participants that gave a gender identity of either “male” or “female”.²

To do this, we need a new operator: %in%, which God knows I just pronounce as “in” (try saying “percent-in-percent” three times fast!). This looks for any matches with any of the elements that come after it:

1anx_data |>
2  dplyr::filter(
3    gender %in% c("female", "male")
    )

1: Take the dataset anx_dat, and then
2: Filter it keeping only the cases where the following assertion is true:
3: The value in the gender variable matches any of the values “female” or “male”.

Why not ==?

What follows here is a rabbit hole that gets into some gritty detail. If you’re happy to take my word for it that you absolutely, definitely needed %in% and not == in the previous exercise, you can skip the explanation below. If you’re keen to understand all the nuance, click to expand and read on!

The Danger of == vs %in%

For this matching task, you might have thought we’d use gender == c("female", "male"), which runs successfully and sure looks okay. So why isn’t this right?

## DO NOT DO THIS
anx_data |> 
  ## THIS DOES NOT DO WHAT WE WANT!!
  dplyr::filter(gender == c("female", "male"))

## DANGER WILL ROBINSON

At a glance it looks like this produces the same output as the solution above - gender now contains only male or female participants. As you might have gathered from the all-caps comments above - intended to prevent you from accidentally using this code in the future for tasks like this - this is NOT what this code does.

To demonstrate what it does do, I need the dplyr::mutate() function from the next tutorial to create some new variables. The first new variable, double_equals, contains TRUEs and FALSEs for each case using the assertion with ==. The second is exactly the same, but reverses the order of the genders - something that should NOT make a difference to the matching! (We want either female OR male participants, regardless of which we happen to write first.) The third, in_op, contains the same again but this time with %in%. The final arrange() line sorts the dataset by gender to make the output easier to read.

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::mutate(
    double_equals = (gender == c("female", "male")),
    double_equals_rev = (gender == c("male", "female")),
    in_op = (gender %in% c("female", "male")),
    .keep = "used"
  ) |> 
  dplyr::arrange(gender)

Notice anything wild?

For participants with the same value in gender, the assertions with == both flip between TRUE and FALSE, but in the reverse pattern to each other. The assertion with %in% correctly labels them all as TRUE. WTF?

What’s happening is that because the vector c("female", "male") contains two elements, the assertion with == matches the first case to the first element - female - and returns TRUE. Then it matches the second case to the second element - male - and this time returns FALSE. Then because there are more cases, it repeats: the next (third) case matches female and returns TRUE, the next male and FALSE, and so forth. The == assertion with the gender categories reversed does the same, but starts with male first and female second. Only %in% actually does what we wanted, which was to return TRUE for any case that matches female OR male.

This is a good example of what I think of as “dangerous” code. I don’t mean “reckless” or “irresponsible” - R is just doing exactly what I asked it to do, and it’s not the job of the language or package creators to make sure my code is right. I mean dangerous because it runs as expected, produces (what looks like) the right output, and even with some brief checking, would appear to contain the right cases - but would quietly result in a large chunk of the data being wrongly discarded. If you didn’t know about %in%, or how to carefully double-check your work, you could easily carry on from here and think no more about it.

So, how can we avoid a problem like this? Think of any coding task - especially new ones, where you’re not completely familiar with the code or functions you’re working with - as a three-step process³.

Anticipate. Form a clear picture of the task you are trying to achieve with your code. What do you expect the output of the code to look like when it runs successfully?
Execute. Develop and run the code to perform the task.
Confirm. Compare the output to your expectations, and perform tests to confirm that what you think the code has done, is in fact what it has done.

So, what might the Confirm step look like for a situation like this?

One option is the code I created above, with new columns for the different assertion options - but this might be something you’d only think to do if you already knew about %in% or suspected there was a problem. A more routine check might look like:

I expect that when my filtering is accomplished, my dataset will contain all and only the participants who reported a gender identy of female or male, and no others. I will also have the same number of cases as the original dataset, less the number of other gender categories.

First, I’ll create a new dataset using the filtered data.

## SERIOUSLY THIS IS BAD
anx_data_bd <- anx_data |> 
## DON'T USE THIS CODE FOR MATCHING
  dplyr::filter(gender == c("female", "male"))
## STOP OH GOD PLEASE JUST DON'T

Check 1: Filtered data contains only male and female participants.

anx_data_bd |> 
  dplyr::count(gender)

Only female and male participants! Tick ✅

At this point, though, I might become suspicious. The original dataset contained 465 cases - we’ve lost more than half! Can that be right?? Better check the numbers.

## Get the numbers from the original dataset
anx_data |> 
  dplyr::count(gender)

Uh oh. Already we can see that something’s wrong with the numbers. But instead of relying on visual checks, let’s let R tell us.

## Calculate how many cases we expect if the filtering had gone right
expected_n <- anx_data |> 
  dplyr::count(gender) |> 
  ## This isn't the best way to filter
  dplyr::filter(gender != "non-binary") |>
  ## The next section on multiple assertions has a much better method!
  dplyr::filter(gender != "other/pnts") |> 
  dplyr::pull(n) |> 
  sum()

## Ask R whether the expected number of rows is equal to the actual number of rows in the filtered data
expected_n == nrow(anx_data_bd)

[1] FALSE

Now we know for sure there’s a problem and can investigate what happened more thoroughly.

As a final stop on this incredibly lengthy detour (are you still here? 👋), you might wonder whether the check above would give me the wrong answer, because I used two filter()s in a row, and the whole point of this goose chase is how to accomplish that exact filtering task. First, this is NOT the way I would do this (as the comments suggest), but I’m really trying to stick to ONLY what we’ve already covered wherever possible. But let’s say I’d tried to do this with the bad == filtering that caused all this faff in the first place.

For this particular case there are four values in gender. If I try gender == c("female", "male") here, this DOES actually work fine - because the categories are in the right order and are a multiple of the length of the dataset 🤦 But at least the numbers still wouldn’t match, which would tell me that something went wrong with filtering the whole dataset.

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::count(gender) |> 
  dplyr::filter(gender == c("female", "male"))

If I happened to have had the genders the other way round, I would have got an empty tibble, and hopefully that also would have clued me in that there was a problem with the original filtering.

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::count(gender) |> 
  dplyr::filter(gender == c("male", "female"))

Multiple Assertions

Logical assertions can also be combined to specify exactly the cases you want to retain. The two most important operators are:

& (AND): Only cases that return TRUE for all assertions will be retained.
| (OR): Any cases that return TRUE for at least one assertion will be retained.

Data Cleaning

Filtering is absolutely invaluable in the process of data cleaning. In order to practice this process, I’ve introduced some messy values into the data, so let’s have a look at a method of cleaning up the dataset and documenting our changes as we go.

Pre-Exclusions

For data collected on platforms like Qualtrics, you can frequently test out your study via a preview mode. Responses completed via preview are still recorded in Qualtrics, but labeled as such in a variable typically called “DistributionChannel” or similar. In this dataset, we have a similar variable, distribution, that labels whether the data was recorded in a preview ("preview") or from real participants ("anonymous").

Your method may vary, but I wouldn’t bother to document these cases as “exclusions” because they aren’t real data. I would just drop them from the dataset - but of course make sure to record the code that does so!

Exercise

Remove any preview runs from the dataset, keeping only real data.

Solution

anx_data <- anx_data |> 
  dplyr::filter(distribution == "anonymous")

Recording Exclusions

As a part of complete and transparent reporting, we will want to report all of the reasons we excluded cases from our dataset, along with the number excluded. We can build this counting process into our workflow so that at the end, we have a record of each exclusion along with initial and final numbers.

Exercise

Follow along with the following data cleaning steps, trying them out in a code chunk for yourself as you go. You’ll need them at the end!

For each check below, our recording process will have two steps:

Produce a dataset of the cases you will exclude, and count the number of rows (cases).
Remove the cases and overwrite the old dataset with the new one.

In my process, I’m going to keep anx_data as the original, “raw” version of the dataset. So, I’ll create a copy in a new dataset object to use while “processing” that I will update as I go.

anx_data_proc <- anx_data

To begin, we will count the initial number of cases before any exclusions.

n_initial <- nrow(anx_data_proc)
n_initial

[1] 453

(Remember that we can use nrow() because there is only one participant per row. If we had long-form data with observations from the same participant across multiple rows, we would have to do something a bit different!)

Consent

For many datasets, you would likely have a variable with responses from your participants about informed consent. How you filter this depends on what that variable contains, of course. However, we’ve already seen examples of this kind of operation earlier in this tutorial.

For the first assertion, we capture any responses that don’t match “Yes”, but for the second, we need to use a function from a family we met all the way back in Tutorial 01/02, namely is.na().

You can think of is.na() as a question about whatever is in its brackets: “Is (this) NA?” If the value IS an NA, R will return TRUE; if it’s anything else at all, R will return FALSE. So, to get an accurate count, we need to capture people who either answered something other than “Yes”, or didn’t answer at all.

n_no_consent <- anx_data_proc |> 
  dplyr::filter(consent != "Yes" | is.na(consent)) |> 
  nrow()

n_no_consent

[1] 33

Then, we remove all participants who did not actively consent and assign the resulting dataset to the same name, overwriting the previous version. As we saw before, the below would discard cases that answered “No” (along with any other value not exactly matching “Yes”) and cases with NAs from people who didn’t answer.

anx_data_proc <- anx_data_proc |> 
  dplyr::filter(consent == "Yes")

Age

For low-risk ethics applications, you may want to exclude people who reported an age below the age of informed consent (typically 18). This may look like age >= 18 or similar in your dataset. However, it’s also important to check for errors or improbable ages, or to remove any participants that are too old if your study has an upper age limit. In this case, my hypothetical study didn’t have an upper age limit, but I’ll designate any ages as 100 or above as unlikely to be genuine responses

Since these are removed for two different reasons, I’ll save them as two separate objects.

## Store the number to be removed
n_too_young <- anx_data_proc |> 
  dplyr::filter(age < 18) |> 
  nrow()
n_too_young

[1] 22

n_too_old <- anx_data_proc |> 
  dplyr::filter(age >= 100) |> 
  nrow()
n_too_old

[1] 5

## Remove them
anx_data_proc <- anx_data_proc |> 
  dplyr::filter(
    dplyr::between(age, 18, 99)
  )

Missing Values

Finally (for now), just about any study will have to decide how to deal with missing values. The possibilities for your own work are too complex for me to have a guess at here, so for now we’ll only look at how to identify and remove missing values.

Single Variable

Let’s look at a single variable to begin with - for example, sticsa_trait_3. We can confirm that this variable has a/some NAs to consider by counting the unique values:

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::count(sticsa_trait_3)

The first thing you might think to try is to filter on sticsa_trait_3 == NA, but weirdly enough this doesn’t work. Instead, we again need the increasingly versatile is.na(), which again, we can think of is.na() as a question about whatever is in its brackets: “Is (this) NA?” Let’s see this in action:

1anx_data_proc |>
2  dplyr::filter(
3    is.na(sticsa_trait_3)
  )

1: Take the dataset anx_data_proc, and then
2: Filter it keeping only the cases where the following assertion is true:
3: The value in the sticsa_trait_3 variable IS missing (is NA).

These are the cases we want to remove, so we count how many there are and assign that number to a useful object name, as we did before.

n_sticsa_t3_missing <- anx_data_proc |>
  dplyr::filter(
    is.na(sticsa_trait_3)
  ) |> 
  nrow()

n_sticsa_t3_missing

[1] 3

Next, we need to actually exclude these cases. This time, we want to retain the inverse of the previous filtering requirement: that is, we only want to keep the cases that are NOT missing a value in sex, the opposite of what we got from is.na(sticsa_trait_3). You may recognise “the inverse” or “not-x” as something we’ve seen before with !=, “not-equals”. For anything that returns TRUE and FALSE, you can get the inverse by putting an ! before it. (Try running !TRUE, for example!)

So, to create my clean anx_data_final dataset, I can use the assertion !is.na(sticsa_trait_3) to keep only the participants who answered this question - who do NOT have a missing value.

Finally, I can store the actual number of usable cases, according to my cleaning requirements, in a final object to use when reporting.

anx_data_final <- anx_data_proc |>
  dplyr::filter(
    !is.na(sticsa_trait_3)
  )

n_final <- nrow(anx_data_final)
n_final

[1] 390

All Variables

Removing NAs is a tricky process, but if you’re sure that you want to drop all cases with missing values in your dataset, there are few helper functions to make this easy.

For this, we’re going to leave filter() for a moment at look at a different function, tidyr::drop_na(). This function takes a tibble as input, and returns the same tibble as output, but with any rows that had missing values removed.

Warning

This is a pretty major step and should be used with caution! If we didn’t check our data carefully, we could easily end up dropping a bunch of cases we didn’t want to get rid of.

For example, if we apply it uncautiously here:

anx_data_proc |> 
  tidyr::drop_na()

Well, there goes all our data!

Exercise

CHALLENGE: Why has every single row in the dataset been dropped? Using any method you like, investigate what’s happened.

Solution

This is something we could work out without any R whatsoever, just using the codebook and a bit of View mode to confirm. The Codebook tells us that participants were in one of two independent conditions: "maths" or "stats". Because of the wide format of the data, there are mcq_maths questions that are always NA for people in the statistics-MCQ condition, and vice versa for the mcq_stats questions and people in the maths-MCQ condition. So, every single participant - even those who answered every question - has at least some missing values, and dropping NAs without checking just bins the whole dataset.

If I wanted to check this with R, I’d be hard pressed to do it with only what we’ve covered so far. Using the some extra challenge functions from the next tutorial, though, I’d do this:

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::mutate(
    ## Create a new variable containing the number of missing values in each row
    number_nas = rowSums(is.na(pick(everything())))
  ) |> 
  ## Count how many missing values there are
  dplyr::count(number_nas)

So, there’s at least 5 NAs in every single row, and when we call tidyr::drop_na(), every single row is dropped.

Reporting

Exercise

CHALLENGE: Using the objects counting intial, final, and excluded cases and what we covered last time about inline code, write a brief journal-style description of your exclusion process.

What is the benefit of taking the extra effort to store these counts in objects? Under what circumstances might this be (particularly) useful?

Solution

You can write whatever you like, but here’s an example using inline code.

The initial sample consisted of `r n_initial` cases. We removed `r n_no_consent` cases that did not consent, `r n_too_young` cases that reported an age below the ethical age of consent, and `r n_too_old` cases that reported improbable ages (100 years old or older). Finally, we removed `r n_sticsa_t3_missing` cases with who had not responded to the third trait item on the STICSA.This left us with a final sample of `r n_final` cases.

When you render your document, this should come out as:

The initial sample consisted of 453 cases. We removed 33 cases that did not consent, 22 cases that reported an age below the ethical age of consent, and 5 cases that reported improbable ages (100 years old or older). Finally, we removed 3 cases with who had not responded to the third trait item on the STICSA. This left us with a final sample of 390 cases.

There’s a huge advantage of this, namely ease of change. Imagine you had researchers from labs all over the world join the study and add a huge amount of new data to a massive collaborative dataset. In order to update all your numbers, all you have to do is update your initial anx_data dataset with the new cases, and then re-run all your code as is. Because these objects count whatever is in the data, they will automatically contain and record the correct numbers for the data you put into them⁴.

There are other advantages too - like confidence that you, a human person who may occasionally make errors (sorry, no offence meant!), won’t misread, mistype, or otherwise mistake the numbers, because at no point do you actually type a particular number yourself.

Nifty, eh?

Select

The select() function is probably the most straightforward of the core {dplyr} functions. Its primary job is to easily and transparently subset the columns within a dataset - in particular, a tibble. Rows are not affected by select(), only columns.

General Format

To subset a tibble, use the general format:

1dataset_name |>
2  dplyr::select(
3    variable_to_include,
4    -variable_to_exclude,
5    keep_this_one:through_this_one,
6    new_name = variable_to_rename,
7    variable_number
  )

1: Take the dataset dataset_name, and then
2: Select the following variables:
3: The name of a variable to be included in the output. Multiple variables can be selected separated by commas.
4: The name of a variable to be excluded from the output. Use either an exclamation mark (!) or a minus sign (-) in front of each variable to exclude. Multiple variables can be dropped, separated by commas with a ! (or -) before each.
5: A range of variables to include in the output. All the variables between and including the two named will be selected (or dropped, with !(drop_this_one:through_this_one)).
6: Include variable_to_rename in the output, but call it new_name.
7: Include a variable in the output by where it appears in the dataset, numbered left to right. For example, “2” will select the second column in the original dataset.

Columns will appear in the output in the order they are selected in select(), so this function can also be used to reorder columns.

Selecting Directly

The best way to get the hang of this will be to give it a go, so let’s dive on in!

Exercise

Create a subset of anx_data that contains the following variables:

The participant’s age
The first variable in the original dataset
All of the STARS variables

Solution

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    age, 1,
    stars_test1:stars_help4
  )

Exercise

Create a subset of anx_data that contains the following variables:

All of the original variables but NOT distribution
mcq renamed condition

Solution

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    -distribution,
    condition = mcq
  )

That’s really all there is to it!

…Or is it?⁵

Using {tidyselect}

The real power in select(), and in many other {tidyverse} functions, is in a system of helper functions and notations collectively called <tidyselect>. The overall goal of “<tidyselect> semantics” (as you will see it referred to in help documentation) is to make selecting variables easy, efficient, and clear.

New to UGs

At UG level at Sussex, students are not taught about <tidyselect> in core modules. However, <tidyselect> is desperately useful and makes complex data wrangling/cleaning a lot faster and more efficient, especially (for instance) for questionnaires with similarly-named subscales, so would make for a great collaborative activity with supervisors!

These helper functions can be combined with the selection methods above in any combination. Some very convenient options include:

everything() for all columns
starts_with(), ends_with(), and contains() for selecting columns by shared name elements
where() for selecting with a function, described in the next section

Exercise

Open the help documentation by running ?dplyr::select in the Console to see examples of how to use all of the <tidyselect> helper functions.

Rather than list examples of all the helper functions here, it’s best to just try them out for yourself!

Exercise

Select the variables in anx_data that have to do with state anxiety.

Solution

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    contains("state")
  )

Exercises

Select all the variables in anx_data that are NOT the R-MARS, R-MARS-S, or STICSA.

Solution

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    ## contains() also fine (in this case)
    !starts_with(c("rmars", "sticsa"))
  )

Exercises

CHALLENGE: Select all the stars variables but NOT the stars_m variables.

Solution

This one’s a bit tricky because both starts_with() and contains() will return both types of STARS variables, because of the way the variables are named. We’ll have to provide multiple assertions, like we did earlier with filter().

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(starts_with("stars") & !contains("_m_"))

Using Functions

Let’s say we want to generate a summary table of the variables in our dataset. Before we can create our summary in the next tutorial, we may first want to produce a subset of our dataset that only contains numeric variables.

To do this, we can use the <tidyselect> helper function where(). This helper function lets us use any function that returns TRUE and FALSE to select columns. Essentially, we don’t have to select columns using name or position - we can use any criteria we want, as long as we have (or can create…!) a function that expresses that criteria.

Especially helpful here is the is.*() family of functions in base R. This group of functions all have the same format, where the * is a stand-in for any type of data or object, e.g. is.logical(), is.numeric(), is.factor() etc. (The very useful is.na() that we’ve seen with filter() above is also a member of this family.) These functions work like a question about whatever you put into them - for example, is.numeric() can be read as, “Is (whatever’s in the brackets) numeric data?”

Tip

You can quickly find all of the functions in this family by typing is. in a code chunk and pressing Tab.

Putting these two together, we could accomplish the task of selecting only numeric variables as follows:

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    where(is.numeric)
  )

This command evaluates each column and determines whether they contain numeric data (TRUE) or not (FALSE), and only returns the columns that return TRUE.

Using Custom Functions

Here There Be Lambdas

The following material in this section isn’t covered in the live workshops. It’s included here for reference because it’s extremely useful in real R analysis workflows, but it won’t be essential for any of the workshop tasks.

The function in where() that determines which columns to keep doesn’t have to be an existing named function. Another option is to use a “purrr-style lambda” or formula (a phrase you may see in help documentation) to write our own criteria on the spot.

For example, let’s select all of the numeric variables that had a mean of 3 or higher:

anx_data |>
  dplyr::select(
    where(~is.numeric(.x) & mean(.x, na.rm = TRUE) >= 3)
  )

Instead of just the name of a function, as we had before, we now have a formula. This formula has a few key characteristics:

The ~ (apparently pronounced “twiddle”!) at the beginning, which is a shortcut for the longer function(x) ... notation for creating functions.
The .x, which is a placeholder for each of the variables that the function will be applied to.

So, this command can be read: “Take my tibble and select all the columns where the following is true: the data type is numeric AND the mean value in that column is greater than or equal to 3 (ignoring missing values).”

Exercise

CHALLENGE: Select the variables in anx_data that are character type, or that do NOT contain any missing values.

Hint: You may need to use function(s) that we haven’t covered in the tutorials so far to solve this.

Solution

This one is a doozy! Very well done if you worked it out, either using your own solution or one like this, or if you got partway there.

anx_data |> 
  dplyr::select(
    where(~ is.character(.x) | all(!is.na(.x)))
  )

Here’s the process to understand/solve this using this particular solution.

The first half of the formula in where() should be okay - you may have noticed the <chr> label in the tibble output and/or guessed that there might be an is.*() function for this purpose.

The second half is a bit rough. You may have tried !is.na(.x) and got an error, namely: Predicate must return TRUE or FALSE, not a logical vector. In other words, this has to return a SINGLE logical value, and is.na() will return a vector containing logical values for each individual value in the variable.

To solve this - at least the way I’ve done - you need the {base} function all(), which answers the question, “Are all of these values TRUE?” It also has a (non-identical) twin any(), which (as you might guess) answers the question, “Are any of these values TRUE?” So, all() does a similar job as AND, and any() a similar job as OR.

To see what I mean, let’s just try it out:

all(TRUE, TRUE)

[1] TRUE

all(TRUE, FALSE)

[1] FALSE

all(FALSE, FALSE)

[1] FALSE

any(TRUE, TRUE)

[1] TRUE

any(TRUE, FALSE)

[1] TRUE

any(FALSE, FALSE)

[1] FALSE

Like AND and OR, all() and any() only give different responses when there are a mix of TRUEs and FALSEs. For this task, we only wanted to retain variables where ALL of the values produced by !is.na(x) were TRUE - that is, it was true that ALL of the values in that variable do NOT contain NAs. So, we wanted all(). This returns a single TRUE or FALSE value for each variable that dplyr::select() can use.

Quick Test: t-test and \(\chi^2\)

Under Construction

This portion of the tutorial is still under construction. Check back another time!

Footnotes

This incredibly useful property is called “data masking”. If you want to know more, run vignette("programming") in the Console.↩︎
I’m not wild about this example - the experiences of non-binary and other genders are just as important! Unfortunately it’s the only variable in the dataset with the right number of categories.↩︎
I did try to think of a snazzy acronym here, but all I came up with is AEC (yikes). I’ll keep thinking and try to update this with something better, and I welcome suggestions if you’ve made it this far!↩︎
I’m sure Jenny would tell you there’s a little more to it than that, especially with 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages! But that’s both the dream and the general idea.↩︎
Have you seen the size of this tutorial?? Of course it isn’t!↩︎